


You Can't Dwell On It

by Phoenixflames12



Series: An Endless Night: Extended Scenes [10]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen, Gotham's Writing Workshop, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 21:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: April, 1942Faith loses a patient in the course of her work at Broch Mordha Cottage Hospital and seeks solace in her Mother





	You Can't Dwell On It

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read in conjunction with chapter 8 of my WW2 AU fic 'An Endless Night', but it's not necessary to read that first. 
> 
> For extra feels, please feel free to listen to the Outlander Season 3 soundtrack- particularly the track 'Rupert is Next'

April 1942

_She’s standing at the foot of the bed of one of her patients- a private named Johnny Keith in the Liverpool Scottish who’d come in with a gangrenous shot wound to the upper thigh._

 

_The gangrene was the result of a bodged operation job at the casualty clearing station, turning into the putridly soft mass of swollen purple-grey flesh that had reeked with the softly sweet stink of infection._

 

_Her tear blurred eyes blink rapidly as the ward sister briskly pulled the screens firmly together, greeting her questioning look with a firm shake of her head._

_‘Too late to do anything now, Nurse,’ the ward sister says, her hazel eyes that remind Faith of her mother just a little bit, her voice void of any emotion as she glances down at the crumpled sheets where only moments before there had been a living, breathing body clinging onto life by a thread._

_She’d seen from his paperwork, what little there was of it to go by, that he’d only been twenty-two._

_He had been fading for days, she’d known that, but to see those crumpled sheets, the brisk fashion in which the orderlies come with a stretcher, tugging their forelocks to them both with looks that are just a little too understanding, had been too much to bear._

_She’d fled the scene on the instant that the ward sister had given her clearance, barely able to choke back the acidic torrent of bile rising steadily through her throat._

* * *

 

‘Faith, is that you?’

 

Her mother’s voice comes as a shock.

 

The bicycle ride from the hospital, weaving her way through the slowly thinning main street of Broch Mordha, feeling the sharp, sunset rays prick against the evening chill, had passed by in a blur.

 

All she could see is Private Keith’s face, slack and clammy in death- his grey eyes shining with distant stars, burning his soul back to his parents in their slum house on the Clydebank. His face had been puffy and swollen, his breath forced out in harsh, shallow gasps that could only signal the worst.

 

 _You can’t dwell on it,_ she had thought firmly; letting the sting of the wind slap cold against her cheek.

 

But she had dwelt on it.

 

It had been Keith’s face she had seen, cold and puffy and lifeless as she had walked down the rows of beds towards the ward sister’s office to fill in the necessary paperwork after the body had been moved. Keith’s hand that had squeezed her own when she bumped into Maggie purely by accident on her way to the surgical ward; eyes wide with concern.

 

_‘Are ye alright, Faith? You look like ye’ve seen a ghost.’_

_‘Aye, I’m fine, Maggie.’ The lie had tasted bitter on her tongue._

 

It had been Keith’s face she had seen grinning back at her instead of some of her cheekier charges; a wink and a grin always ready when she came to do their TPRs or hand them their requested cup of tea.

 

Instead of the hard, worn rubber of her bicycle handles, it had been the greasy chill of dying skin that she’d felt, crawling against her palm.

 

‘Faith?’

 

She finds herself standing in the hallway with no memory of getting there. Each breath is an effort, her lungs trapped against her ribcage. Her hands are trembling, cold and sore and blue against her dress. Each step she has taken from the kailyard to the hall has been a mile in pain, a mile in trying to steel herself against what she knows to be the truth.

 

_You can’t dwell on it._

_You can’t…_

_You…_

‘What’s the matter, _mo chuisle?’_

 

Claire’s face swims in and out of focus and before she’s fully conscious of the great barrier of emotion that she has tried so hard to supress suddenly breaking forth, Faith finds herself clinging to her mother; incoherent sobs shattering into the silence.

 

* * *

 

 

‘One of my first patients died on me too,’ they are sitting in the kitchen, listening to the low, steady hum of the wireless.

 

Faith’s hands are clamped around a mug of steaming camomile tea, trying to stem the shivering that comes despite the tartan rug tucked tightly about her shoulders.

 

Claire’s eyes are very big, soft and wide with love, glowing in the fading light.

 

‘When?’ The question comes out more like a squeak.

 

‘When I was nursing at the RMA. Before I met your Da. It… He wasn’t a cadet, just an unlucky civilian caught up in a car accident in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He-‘

 

She pauses then, groping in her pocket for a handkerchief.

 

‘He made me promise,’ her mother’s voice is caught with tragedy, something that Faith can’t read flickering across her face.

 

‘He made me promise that I’d keep nursing. That I’d keep trying, despite it all. He’d sustained a punctured lung and there was nothing we could do but try to keep the blood from drowning him too quickly. I.. I haven’t thought about it for years.’

 

Her voice is distant, her gaze seeming to be looking past Faith, past the front door and towards a great unknown expanse of time and space.

 

Faith can do nothing but nod, her own eyes travelling towards the framed photograph of her parents, taken at their wedding that sits on the mantelpiece.

 

‘Did Da say that to you as well?’ She doesn’t trust her voice. Doesn’t trust herself to ask the real question that is burning on her lips, doesn’t trust herself to put a voice to the fears that have been burning at her heart ever since the newspapers got word of the Battle for France.

 

_‘Do you think he’ll come home? When?’_

 

Her Da grins out at her from the carved, elm wood frame, tall and straight and firm in his Fraser tartan, the smile that she misses so much twinkling at the corner of his mouth, shining through his eyes; Claire glowing with her bouquet of summer roses cascading out of her arms.

 

Claire nods sadly, following her gaze, reaching out a steadying hand, burying a kiss against her knuckles.

 

‘We mustn’t dwell on it, _mo chridhe._ He wouldn’t want us to.’

 

* * *

 

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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